Fool's Gold

by PJ Skinner

  ‘I’d love one of those empanadas, Wilson,’ said Sam.

  ‘They’re full of germs and will make you ill,’ he replied. ‘I’ll buy you something safe.’

  It was pretty obvious that the conditions in the kitchens were dreadfully unsanitary, but this didn’t stop Sam from sulking. Wilson bought some boiled white rice and some unidentifiable cremated meat. She had never been fond of rice and liked to eat meat still in its death throes, so she wasn’t impressed by this culinary delicacy.

  ‘What meat is this?’ she asked.

  ‘I don’t know. Peccary? Monkey? No idea.’

  ‘Monkey? They eat monkey?’

  ‘Maybe not. It’s probably pig.’

  ‘It’s horrible.’

  ‘You’re not in England now. I thought you were tough. Eat the food. You won’t get anything better until you’re back in Calderon.’

  She chewed her way through most of it and ate the rice, which was salty and made her thirsty. She didn’t dare drink any water.

  The lack of sanitary facilities had become a serious problem. She had been hoping that they would pull into a bigger town with a public toilet, but the towns were getting smaller and more primitive, and they never stopped long enough for a pee break. Just when she thought she would have to apologise to Wilson for flooding the seat, the train shunted into a siding and stopped. Sam turned to him in expectation.

  ‘Have we arrived?’ she asked.

  ‘No, not yet. We still have a couple of hours to go. There’s only one track for the trains to travel on. Our train has to make way for one coming in the other direction. We may be here for a while, depending on whether they left San Lorenzo on time or not.’

  Sam grabbed her chance and climbed over the other inhabitants of the train in a frantic rush. She dashed out between the shacks on stilts and down to a small pond. People were washing themselves and their clothes in it at the same time. She tried to find somewhere discrete to urinate but the combined effect of the sprint and the sound of water defeated her abused bladder. She squatted behind a spindly tree and tried to look inconspicuous as the only white person in a black village taking a volcanic leak in plain sight. Avoiding eye contact with the crowd of children watching her from close quarters, she walked back to the train. She took some photographs of the children and the train in the siding and accepted a banana from one of the villagers. There was a loud tooting noise. The other train chugged past and the guard pulled the lever to switch the track back so that the train could move out of the siding. Sam was not concentrating, assuming that the glacial pace of travel could not be accelerated, and suddenly the train was pulling out again, without her. Stumbling up the bank, she only managed to get a foothold as it moved off. She clambered over the bodies and chickens and bananas with a look of relief that made Wilson laugh. It was his fault for letting her drink two bottles of lemonade at the station before they set out. She had a nagging feeling he had done it on purpose and decided not to drink anything on the way back.

  Finally, when the pain in her bottom caused by sitting on the wooden seats for ten hours had reached the unbearable stage, the train arrived at San Lorenzo, a bustling town of wooden huts and mud streets with a similar station to San Martin. Leaving the train was bedlam. A group of local youths offered their services as baggage carriers, fighting over each bag dropped down from the roof. Wilson had his work cut out for him, ensuring that one did not go missing in the pandemonium. When they had claimed all their possessions, Wilson hired a pickup truck for the last leg of their journey. Sam steeled herself for another endless journey squashed between him and the very smelly driver who leered at her in a disconcerting fashion. Whatever the driver had in mind remained a mystery, as the dirt road was in an appalling state with massive ruts and muddy channels requiring all his skill and two hands on the wheel. It didn’t help that the shock absorbers were non-existent. Sam and Wilson were thrown from side to side and Sam cracked her head on the roof going over a particularly big bump in the road.

  By the time they arrived at Riccuarte, a small shantytown in the middle of the rain forest, Sam felt as if she was sitting on a tenderised steak. Sliding off the truck seat, she jumped to the ground snagging her trousers on the end of a spring sticking out of the upholstery. Swearing, she twisted around and made sure that the tear wasn’t too revealing. The driver sniggered but an icy stare from Sam stopped him in his tracks. A man stepped out of the shadows where he had been watching them and approached.

  ‘You are welcome to Riccuarte. My name is Moises. I’m a member of the village council. There’s no hotel but we use some empty houses for people passing through.’

  Wilson grunted, looking at Moises with obvious disdain. Sam smiled. ‘I’m Sam, and this is Wilson,’ she said, sticking out her hand and inspecting their host. Moises was a mestizo, the dominant group in Sierramar consisting of people of mixed European and Amerindian races but he was out of place in this village. He had straight black hair streaked with grey that hung around his wrinkled face in a pudding bowl cut. His wiry body seemed to float above the ground such was the Zen-like calmness that enveloped him. With his air of solemnity, and a patriarchal bearing that was at odds with his surroundings, he seemed to Sam like a man to be reckoned with.

  Ignoring Wilson’s rudeness, he directed them to follow him up the main street to a ramshackle house that stood on stilts.

  This is the guest house. I’m sorry that it isn’t in a better state but we don’t get many visitors around here.’

  ‘It’ll do for one night,’ said Wilson. ‘Can you find a canoe and some men for us? We want to travel up river.’

  ‘How long will you need them for?’

  ‘Four or five days.’

  ‘I’ll arrange it now. My wife will bring you some rice for your dinner, and some coffee and biscuits at dawn. I’ll meet you on the riverbank at dawn with a team of men.’

  ‘Make sure they’re good workers. These black people are born lazy. Look at this house.’

  Sam winced. Don Moises did not comment and headed into the darkness. They stood on the street gazing through the gloom at the shack where they would spend the night. There was no front door. A lopsided doorframe with interesting fungi springing from the holes in the wood was all that remained. It had only one habitable room, the floors in the other room having caved in. Two log stools made up the lavish furnishings of this palace. There would be no escape from living with Wilson in close proximity. Sam wondered if this was the best accommodation available in the village. Wilson had not treated Don Moises with much respect and she suspected the two things were linked. Worse still, something was missing.

  ‘Where’s the toilet?’

  ‘There is no toilet. You have to go to the forest or the river. You can wash in the river, which runs parallel to the main street over there.’

  ‘But won’t everyone see me?’ said Sam, remembering the crowd for her last performance.

  ‘The best time is the early morning before everyone gets up. You can have a quick wash in the river at sun-up before breakfast or in the evening as it gets dark.’

  ‘Okay.’

  ‘Be careful when you wash in the river.’

  ‘Why? Are there crocodiles?’

  ‘No, this isn’t Africa. There’s a small fish in the river. It’s dangerous.’

  ‘Like a piranha?’

  ‘No, it’s called a Candiru. It likes urine. It follows your pee and goes in to your urethra. You have go to hospital to cut it out.’

  ‘That sounds awful,’ said Sam. ‘How do we stop them?’

  ‘Always wear tight underwear in the river.’

  ‘Okay, thanks.’

  Sam couldn’t imagine the point of these fish. What were they doing swimming up the urethra anyway? She took exaggerated care with her ablutions that evening. This involved all sorts of body contortions that ended with her falling head first into the river. She had an audience, despite the hour, who gave her a spontaneous cheer. They wouldn’t go away no matt
er how much she tried and she was forced to wash with her back to the town, wearing her clothes from the day’s travels. She made Wilson go outside while she put on dry clothes and she hung the wet ones around the house.

  After a supper of rice and a tin of tuna, which was like the nectar of the gods to Sam, they lay on sleeping bags on the floor of the hut covered with mosquito nets hanging from the roof beams. Sam did her best to make a mattress out of some clothes but it was uncomfortable on the hard, uneven floor. Under normal circumstances, she prided herself on being able to sleep anywhere but this was a new experience. She lay down and shut her eyes, trying to breathe deeply and slow her heart, which was racing. To her intense annoyance, the cicadas competed with the tree frogs for the title of the noisiest animals on the planet. At least she knew what all the screeching and peeping was. There were a lot of noises coming from inside and outside the hut that she didn’t recognise. It was hard to ignore the presence of Wilson, so close that she could almost feel the heat emanate from his body. All her romantic ideas about living in the jungle evaporated.

  Sometime after midnight, she was woken by something tugging at her head. Opening her eyes with a certain amount of dread, she switched on her torch and was horrified to find herself face-to-face with a large rat that had been busying himself gnawing off pieces of her hair for his nest. Startled to be caught in the act, and before she had time to react, he disappeared at speed into a hole in the floor. She rubbed her head ruefully finding a small patch of very short hair sticking up from the scalp. No matter what she told herself about nature and all its wonderful creatures, she found it impossible to sleep after that. She wedged herself into a corner and flashed the torch at every creak and groan emitted by the hut. She spent a long night wondering why she hadn’t joined a bank instead of being so stubborn. Wilson slept like a log, emitting blissful snores, ensuring that she would hate him even more in the morning.

  Chapter VIII

  The next morning, they got up before dawn. For breakfast, they drank scalding cups of coffee, thick with sugar, and ate stale pink wafer biscuits. Sam was too tired to explain that she didn’t like sweet coffee. She had a feeling that it came like that in Riccuarte. Drained after her night in the corner, the sugar gave her an immediate boost. In the near dark, she had a quick pee behind the house, praying that all the snakes were still asleep. Her belongings stuffed back into her rucksack, she followed Wilson down to the riverbank in the cold light. A row of wooden canoes was pulled up onto the shingle. On the other side of the river an impenetrable jungle loomed over them, dark and dank. The cicadas made a racket that belied their size.

  They were joined on the riverbank by three men who had been selected by Moises to travel with them. He was the obvious leader of the group even though he was not black, and was half the size of the others who were introduced as Carlos, Rijer and Gustino. Doña Elodea, an attractive woman who might have been in her late forties, also joined the expedition to do the cooking and panning. She tried to talk to Sam but soon gave up when she didn’t understand. Sam was a bit disheartened by her inability to grasp what people were saying. It had been getting much easier in Calderon, and she had been making strong progress there. The local accent in Riccuarte was proving impossible to decipher. She would have to rely on Wilson to translate into Calderon Spanish or pidgin English, and she wasn’t always convinced by the result. Whether he did it on purpose or not, she couldn’t tell. It gave him power over her that she wasn’t comfortable with.

  Don Moises had selected a canoe with high sides, hollowed from a single long tree trunk that could take all seven of them with their provisions and bags stowed at the front with ease. It had tool marks on it that showed it had been made by hand. Comfort was not a priority. There were loose blocks of wood on the floor that served as seats. Her bottom still tender following the train journey, Sam wondered how she would tolerate sitting all day. She sat down on one of the blocks, which rolled over and deposited her in the water at the bottom of the canoe. Hoping no-one had noticed, she grabbed the sides of the canoe and hauled herself back onto the wobbly seat, the damp now creeping along her trousers. It was cold and the chill moved up her thighs to the back of her knees. She leaned forward, grabbing her knees to try to take some of the pressure off her back, and steeled herself for a long day.

  Wilson sat in front of her with Don Moises at the prow. A flock of parrots passed far overhead chatting to each other like women in a bus queue. Carlos, who was at the back of the canoe, steered it away from the bank with a long paddle at the back of the boat. He then picked up a long pole. At the front, Rijer and Gustino, both with one foot on the edge of the canoe for balance, and the other in the bottom, used long poles to punt the boat up the stream by sticking them in the riverbed and pushing the canoe forward. Carlos did the same at the other end, using the paddle to steer when necessary. It was a more efficient method of travel than it looked and they made good progress against the current, scything through the clear water in smooth steps.

  When the canoe arrived at a rapid, they all disembarked and hauled it upstream past the rocks and boiling water and into the main channel. The canoe was immensely heavy, and even with the buoyancy afforded by the water, it took a massive effort from the team to drag it through the rapids against the current and around the rocks. Sam could not help much, but she still tried and was soaked each time by the strong waters of the river. She found it exhilarating to be using her physical strength in this way and was reminded of the old Tarzan movies she had watched as a child. Unfortunately, there were no friendly elephants to pull the canoe upriver in this version of the movie.

  It took them six hours to get to the farthest boundary of the mining claim they were investigating. They had arrived at the highest navigable part of the river in the interior of the rain forests that grew between the Andes and the coast of Sierramar. The region was almost untouched by human development due to the absence of roads. The only populated places were the banks of the innumerable rivers. Most of the villages had black inhabitants. They had, by and large, replaced the local indigenous population, except for isolated villages. The vegetation was built up into huge verdant walls, rising many metres above the riverbanks. Here and there among the leaves sat small huts on stilts surrounded by banana trees. Sam was disappointed by the lack of wildlife.

  ‘Why haven’t we seen any animals yet?’ she asked Wilson.

  He laughed. ‘These people,’ he said, gesturing dismissively, ‘they eat everything. Only the parrots have survived. They’re not stupid, you know. They fly too high to get shot.’

  The jungle was not completely lifeless. There was an abundance of huge, colourful dragonflies and a few red admiral butterflies that looked oddly out of place. Sam took photographs of everything she could get close to. From their continuous peeping, she could tell that frogs were also common, but she didn’t see any jungle-dwelling mammals. Frustrated by her inability to decipher the local accent, Wilson was forced to translate almost everything for her. He veered between irritation at her floundering, and a strange leering attention that made her uneasy.

  ‘Wilson, I need something to do; why can’t I help Doña Elodea?’

  ‘Here in Sierramar it is not appropriate for a boss to do any manual work. You may not carry anything or serve the food. The workers will lose their respect for you.’

  Sam was pretty sure that his attitude towards her was the main thing causing them to lose respect for her. She could cope with the novel surroundings but not the inactivity. She found that watching other people work all day lost its charm after a few hours, and there were only so many photographs she could take. They were digging pits in the gravel and then panning the samples to test for gold. Gustino and Rijer did most of the digging, sweating profusely in the humid heat of the river shade. Their spectacular physiques glistened in the sun as they rhythmically dug out the pits. Don Moises did not seem to do anything at all except supervise. Wilson wrote copious notes on the type of gravel, the size of the stones,
the type of matrix they were in and the composition of the stones. Sam had never worked on alluvial gravels before and paid close attention to this process, asking lots of questions. She looked at the stones that made up the gravel, but apart from being smooth and rounded, they did not look geologically interesting. Sam asked Wilson to explain, which he did laboriously.

  ‘The gold has been eroded from a deposit high in the mountains and has washed down the river with all the stones. Gold is heavy and falls out of the water into the bottom of the river. The river terraces are ancient riverbeds that have been moved and concentrated many times by ancient rivers. This friction makes the stones round.’

  ‘That means that the gravel with round stones have a good chance of containing areas with concentrations of gold?’

  ‘Yes, round stones, and not a lot of sand and silt.’

  ‘So, it would be a good idea to record the structure of the gravel so we can sample them separately?’

  ‘That’s what I am doing,’ said Wilson, although Sam had seen no evidence of it.

  ‘Shall I draw them to scale?’

  ‘Okay, but show me what you have done so I can correct your mistakes.’

  Sam ignored this comment. She drew detailed profiles of the pits that they made in the gravel, measuring the layers of sand and gravel and noting the approximate percentages of pebbles and gravel in each layer. Wilson examined the drawings and didn’t comment but Sam noticed that he directed the workers to sample each layer that she had identified. Sam noted the number of each sample so that they could be identified later.

  Doña Elodea and Carlos, tasked with checking the gravel for gold, were experts, and Sam watched them as they loaded their large wooden pans with gravel and bent double to lower them into the water. They swirled the pans on the surface, allowing the water to wash through the top of the gravel to clean out the lighter materials and free any heavy materials to sink deeper into the pans. They floated the pans on the surface of the river and brushed the clean gravel from the top of the materials in the pan out into the river. The quantity of material in the pan slowly reduced until there was only a patch of black sand left in the indentation at the bottom of the pan. The panner then slowly trickled water across the black sand, washing it down the pan and into the sample bag. Sam could see several flecks of gold in the tail of the black sand. They looked like pieces of glitter, but there was no mistaking their yellow glow. She was dying to try this for herself but Wilson glared at her as if reading her thoughts.